


when you're doing all the leaving (then it's never your love lost)

by nogohello



Series: Of leaving, returning and staying [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: And he gets one (i guess), Canonical Character Death, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Light Angst, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Other, Parent Number Five | The Boy, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:05:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27080143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nogohello/pseuds/nogohello
Summary: "Her imagination knows no boundaries and everyday she finds new stories and made-up tales to tell Five. To her every cloud is on a journey and every bird calls for an adventure, and Five, he is her sidekick on every superhero mission she runs on with her teddy-bear and barbie doll."----------------------------------------In which Five adopts a young Lila and takes her to 2010 to give her a normal childhood.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Lila Pitts
Series: Of leaving, returning and staying [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1976401
Comments: 12
Kudos: 159





	when you're doing all the leaving (then it's never your love lost)

**Author's Note:**

> A story written out of my love for found families and soft Number Five. It's probably gonna be part of a series :)
> 
> If you find any errors feel free to tell me; English isn't my mother tongue. I'm open for critique!
> 
> (Title taken out of the song "In Memoriam")

Five is thirteen when he leaves his family home.

Or well; _home_ —that is to say his siblings. His father. His android mom and ape butler. The academy. ( _And in bitter silence he also leaves behind the torture. The abuse. The childhood that never was_.)

So he’s thirteen, blinking through time within a hue of strong, electric blue, to jump from a technicolor world of one that lay in ashes and flames. Utter chaos that smells of death and destruction and whatever the cause may have been stayed as hidden to him as the many bodies under the grime and rubble.

He endures the apocalypse, with both despair and determination in mind as he navigates through the wasteland. He rarely sleeps, rarely eats. He just walks and walks and tries and survives, barely but still.

* * *

Five is sixteen when he finally meets another human again (since, and he has trouble admitting it, _Dolores_ does not count). It is a woman, blonde and in extravagant clothing, standing amidst the ruins of what must’ve once been someone’s house. She lifts her hand in a cheerful greeting and stretches her mouth into the most unnatural smile—which the boy’s eyes had long been untrained to see—and calls for him to come closer.

In her bright red dress and high-heels she is even more of an anachronism than Five is. _The Handler_ , she calls herself, and as she explains the deal and vaguely introduces him to the concept of the Commission, Five’s mind wanders off to the home he once left behind. Three, long years ago.

He has no other choice, he knows, and so he gives the woman a firm nod and shakes the soft-skinned hand she had elegantly ungloved and extended to him. A deal is a deal.

* * *

Working for the Commission is a lot easier than he had expected. He had, after all, been trained to be a soldier and it is no surprise he soon is one of the best assassins the company has to offer.

The Handler often strokes his cheek and calls him her “greatest pride” and he wants to pull away and grit his teeth, but something inside him is so starved of touch and attention that makes it impossible for him to recoil.

The five years he is signed up for by contract pass him by in a haze and before he knows it, he is sent on his last mission with two other professionals from his field: Hazel and Cha-Cha.

They travel to London in 1995 and take out several random people, as they are used to doing. Last on the list is the Gill couple, a seemingly plain and unimportant pair, but Five knows not to question the reason behind their missions. Knows not to view his victims as people, but rather variables in the timeline. And the timeline is what he is meant to preserve.

Thus, he watches as his co-workers shoot them down and makes sure they leave no trails. Hazel and Cha-Cha leave and he stays behind to wait for the Handler. To finally receive his last briefcase. So he can see his sibling again. The ones he left behind, eight years ago.

That day the Handler is dressed in all turquoise and diamonds. Hair as light and lips as red as ever. She beams at him and giggles like a little child as he impatiently eyes her. “Five”, she swoons, “Sweet, little Five-y. I have your ride home with me.”

She holds up the black briefcase, but as he reaches out, she takes a step back. “Not so fast, darling. This is not how business works.”

His jaw tenses. He can sense the deal long before she proposes it.

She tries to convince him to stay—or she threatens and blackmails him, is more like it. _Returning to your brothers and sisters has fatal consequences, Five. You belong here. Your place is with us. And you know you can’t beat me at this game._

But something inside him tells him he can.

Before he knows it, three bullets are embedded in her body. One between her eyes and two in her chest. She doesn’t twitch, doesn’t scream. It’s all _nothing, nothing, nothing._

For a moment Five just stands and watches her unblinking eyes glaze over. It feels like time had stopped.

* * *

The phone rings. It’s pale and yellow and _loud_ and the young man knows it’s for him. Knows who is calling.

He maneuvers through the remnants of living-room furniture and doesn’t look at the bodies of the Gills as he picks up.

In all the time he has worked for the Comission, he has only talked to AJ Charmichael once or twice. But he recognizes his voice, his sly and nonchalant tone. And while Five’s hatred for the Handler and her twisted ways had always been fiery and raging, his disdain for this man was much different. It just made him itch under his skin.

“Number Five.”, he begins, “Now, I am deeply sorry to break the news to you like that. You cannot return to your siblings.”

“Fucking asshole”, Five hears himself mutter, inspecting the new blood-stains on his suit. “Our deal is done.”

Charmichael chuckles. “It certainly is. Especially since you just basically killed your superior. But this is not about your work here at all. No no no, you of all people should know how fragile this timeline is. One wrong step and it falls apart. _It goes up in flames, Five_. We can’t let you do that.”

Five sucks in a deep breath and tightens the fist his left hand had curled into.

“And what now, huh? I spent years killing for you guys. All for one purpose. And you’re taking it from me, just like that!”

“Think rationally. The briefcase that is in your possession at the moment is able bring you to 2010. We are providing you with all the money and resources you need to start anew, just as promised. All we’re asking of you is to not return home, Five. Anything else is fine—you just need to stay away from your family. I’m afraid that otherwise we have to eliminate you, Five. And we know you’re capable, but even more so you know that you would not stand against us. So, take the deal.”

And just like that the conversation is over.

All Five had lived for all this time, _gone in an instant._

He looks over at the briefcase propped up next to the Handler. Next to her _corpse_. And he snarls and curses and feels his eyes stinging with tears as he kicks at the debris surrounding him.

 _His sole reason for staying alive, all these years. Gone. Five years of murder. Five years of The Handler. All that solitude and lunacy_.

But then something stops him in his delirium. A noise. A whimper. A shuffling.

And only then it occurs to him he wasn’t alone.

* * *

It didn’t take him long to find the child, shaking and crying quietly in fear.

She must’ve hidden all this time, clutching a stuffed animal to her chest and wiping at her tears with the fluffy, pink sleeves of her night-gown.

“Hey sweetheart”, he rasped as softly as he could. He’d never been good with weeping children, even back when he was one himself. “It’s okay, you hear me? _Shit_ , I’m gonna get you out of here. You-…You’ll be alright.”

And that day Five leaves again.

But this time through a briefcase, with a little girl in tow. And he is confused and unsure of where he is headed and what he is doing, but he leaves and knows that he won’t want to return. Knows that this time something is beginning, and not ending.

* * *

Lila had just turned six when she lost her parents. When Five had watched his co-workers kill them.

She’s six and a force of nature, the man soon discovers. At first quiet and shy, as most children (especially after their life is turned upside down), but incredibly energetic and outgoing once she had warmed up to him.

Her imagination knows no boundaries and everyday she finds new stories and made-up tales to tell Five. To her every cloud is on a journey and every bird calls for an adventure and Five, he is her sidekick on every superhero mission she runs on with her teddy-bear and barbie doll.

It stirs awake an ache in Five to hear her talk of _heroes_ and _villains_ and _saving the world_ but he still plays along and tries to give her the happiness and normalcy she deserves.

They moved into a small house in 2010, right outside a thinly populated town just two hours away from where the Umbrella Academy is. They are known as the Pitts, though they rarely converse with any neighbors, but Five enrolled Lila in public school and accompanies her to the town’s playground from time to time. He never lets her out of sight, fearing something from his past might come back to haunt them, but tries to give her enough space and let her play with the other children.

Lila latches onto others quite quickly, craving to be in company at all times; something that is quite the opposite of how Five behaved when he was small. She cannot stand to be alone.

It is good then, that he doesn’t plan on ever leaving her.

* * *

They celebrate her birthdays. October 1st.

It does not take long for the young man to put one and one together, to connect the dots between his mission and the child. He decides to wait for her possible powers to naturally show up (and hopes that she ends up not having any.) And to his relief, so far there hadn’t been any signs.

She turns seven and then eight and then nine and Five gets to watch her grow. Gets to give her a childhood.

He picks her up after school and listens to her ramble all the way through the twenty-minute car-ride. They always eat together and over the years Five finds a love for cooking and baking. The skills he gained during the apocalypse were of quite another sort, and though he had some culinary training during his Comission years, the emphasis was then more on “ _How to poison someone without them noticing_ ” than “ _How to please a picky child and still make it nutritional_ ”.

Fridays are movie nights and Saturdays are mostly spent by the small lake nearby. Lila adores picknicks and drawing and Five gets to enjoy a good book on quantum physics in comfortable silence.

He still thinks of his siblings. He wasn’t the only one who had grown to be 25, after all.

He finds newspaper articles on both of his sisters. One being a review of Allison Hargreeves’ latest movie, even including a small interview with her, and the other one stating Vanya to be one of the city’s newest violin soloists on the rise. It included a photo of her— _tiny, meek Number Seven_ —smiling tensely with her violin in hand. She had grown out her bangs, but the look in her eyes was just the same.

Five often reminisces on how close they had been. _Five and Seven, Seven and Five_.

But memories pain him and a small pounding in his head arises every time. _The future_ , he tells himself, _you’ll have a future together. No need to hang onto the past_.

He does not know how, but he needs to return to them someday. And he’ll make sure that happens, whatever it takes.

Luther, Diego and Klaus don’t seem to have any public roles, at least not so far. Ben, Five finds out, passed away when they were only sixteen. It was pretty big on the news back then, the passing of The Horror, a beloved member of the Umbrella Academy. And it makes sense now, that Five never found his body during his time spent in a burning wasteland.

Five wonders if he could’ve made a difference. If Ben would still be alive, hadn’t he left. He’d often forget himself in those thoughts, clenching his fists and gazing off into the distance. But then Lila would tug at his sleeve and say “Five, come back here.”, and her doe-eyes and dimples would pull him into the moment again.

Children can be a lot smarter than adults like to make them out to be, the man knows. And he can tell Lila is bright just by the spark in her eyes and her mischievous grin before she makes a witty comment.

He wants to be here for her, sometimes almost to make up for the fact that he hadn’t been there for his siblings. He wants and needs to make sure they all live.

And he’s never going to leave again.

* * *

It is 2015. Lila is ten.

It is in the middle of a summer night that he wakes to her shouting. Or well, he doesn’t really wake, since a part of him had forgotten how to really sleep during his youth, but he bolts upright in his bed and runs across the hall to her bedroom.

There she is, sitting on her bed, bawling her eyes out. “ _Dad_ ”, she cries, and Five's heart breaks in that moment.

 _Her father is dead. She must’ve dreamed of her parents. He cannot give her what she needs. He is responsible for all that hurting and all those tears_.

Lila just continues rubbing her eyes and pulling her face into a grieving grimace as he hovers by the doorframe.

“Dad, I had a nightmare.”

And it hits him like lightning. She’s calling for him.

His first impulse is to blink away, to wrap space around him, to tear it apart and mend it again. It is an old reflex, though he had refrained from using his powers ever since he stopped working for the Commission, for the sake of safety and normality.

But he knows better than to leave, and as he kneels down by her bedside and murmurs words of comfort and assurance, Lila wraps her small arms around him and buries her face in his shoulder.

It was a nightmare as normal as for any child and Five can’t help but crack a tiny smile when he has to check for monsters in her closet and under the bed. She scolds him for not taking it seriously enough and so he makes her do it with him. He swears on his life to not tell any of her school friends about it. He doesn’t leave her until she’s fast asleep again.

He doesn’t leave.

That night he cries, which is something he usually take pride in not doing. Something he just thinks he isn’t meant to do. But he does, and he does so out of both fear and relief. _Dad_ , she had called him. Him, who’d taken part in assassinating her parents. Him, who’d do anything to keep her safe.

Him, who will stay by her side and protect her, for as long as he can.

* * *

He wakes up the next morning and they make pancakes together. Outside it is warm and bright and Five wonders if they could go on a road-trip together. It is summer after all, and they had yet to see the world.

The time will come where he’ll have to confront his family and stop the apocalypse, but he knows there are still years to pass. For now it’s the two of them: _Five and Lila, Lila and Five_.

He’ll see about the rest.


End file.
